RagFest 2018

What to Expect

Get ready for an entire afternoon of great ragtime through half-hour and 45-minute sets – then, after the dinner break, a formal ragtime revue show on the Curtis stage. Throughout the festival, you’ll be able to meet and talk with the performers and purchase their recordings and other ragtime merchandise.

About the Show

Anyone who says ragtime music died off in the 1920s hasn’t been to RagFest, northern Orange County’s annual ragtime music festival. Founded in Fullerton in October of 2000, RagFest provides local audiences a chance to hear some of the best ragtime musicians around while giving performers a way to connect with the music’s biggest fans.

Ragtime music’s heyday spanned the 1890s through the 1910s and boasted pianist-composers like Scott Joplin, Eubie Blake, Zez Confrey, Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson and a wide range of sub-genres (folk ragtime, “pop”/Tin Pan Alley, “classic” ragtime, Novelty, Harlem Stride). RagFest 2018’s performers perpetuate the thousands of vintage pieces from this era via the piano and other instruments as well as in song. Many are also composers who’ll perform wonderful new rags of their own creation.

Drop in on the Curtis for RagFest and you’ll be submerged in a wonderful afternoon and evening of toe-tapping syncopation, all courtesy of some of the most amazing keyboard wizards you’ve ever seen – or heard!